Not Fade Away: Armi's star still burns (ADDED 6.2.2008)
Armi Kuusela is the Finns' all-time favourite beauty queen. Her win in the first Miss Universe pageant is not forgotten, though she has not lived in Finland for more than fifty years.
By Anna-Stina Nykänen
A beauty with the looks and posture of a movie star poses in front of goggling Finns at the newly-opened Helsinki Airport.
That star is of course Armi Kuusela, who has just returned from the 1952 Miss Universe competition, the inaugural holding of the event.
And she won it.
Doctoral student Maija Urponen shows off the 1952 photos with some enthusiasm and points to the difference between the Finns - some of whom have turned out in national dress - and Kuusela, who looks svelte and poised in an evening gown: Armi is no longer the little neighbour’s girl she was when she left.
She has picked up international glamour on her trip across the Atlantic.
All these decades later, Armi Kuusela still manages to interest the Finns, even if we have a plethora of beauty queens each year.
A few years ago there was a book on her - and on the beauty pageant industry in general - by Nina af Enehjelm.
And now Armi is attracting interest from academic circles. Maija Urponen says it is because the beginning of the 21st century in Finland saw a new pulse of internationalisation in Finnish life.
“Multiculturalism started to interest people" , says Urponen. She is conducting doctoral research at the University of Helsinki’s Christina Institute for Women’s Studies, looking into the social impact of transnational relationships. Armi Kuusela is a part of the history of that topic.
Urponen is drawn to the way the Finland of the 1950s reacted to the fact that Kuusela, chosen as an arch-symbol of Finnishness, then promptly went and married a foreigner and chose to live on the other side of the world from her homeland.
Armi Kuusela’s Miss Universe victory in 1952 is still regarded as a significant Finnish milestone.
Last autumn, when the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE enquired of its radio listeners what they thought was the best bit of news from Finnish history, what floated to the surface was an archive clip telling of Armi’s win in California.
It was ranked on a par with Paavo Nurmi’s victories on the Olympic running track.
Admittedly, not all the listeners actually knew at the time what sort of pageant was involved.
In 1952, the Disabled War Veterans’ Association (Sotainvalidien Veljesliitto) wished to cheer up its activities through the selection of a Suomen Neito, or “Maiden of Finland”, who would represent all the right virtues.
“The ideal was Aino from the national epic Kalevala - gentle, demure, and able to perform in public”, explains Urponen.
Beauty was not really of the essence; there was no such thing as a swimsuit parade in those days. What was being sought was a kind of core-Finnishness in female shape.
At the same time in the United States, a decision was taken to arrange the first-ever Miss Universe pageant.
The Finns got the idea that it would be good to send the future “Maiden” to compete across the Atlantic.
The thinking was pragmatic enough: the idea of PanAm tickets and an all-expenses trip for the winner would tempt in better candidates than the thought of getting in free to Disabled Veterans’ events. Besides, this would give Finland, still digging out from the war, a shot at picking up some much-needed international visibility.
The venture was not universally welcomed, by any manner of means.
The competition prompted mixed feelings among the public. There were questions as to whether it was quite right and proper for young ladies to compete and put themselves forward in this fashion.
Among those on the left of the political spectrum, the entire Miss Universe idea was regarded as American superficiality in action, and a part of the tacky pin-up culture.
Religious circles also had misgivings about the suitability of the contest.
“Familiar enough arguments that you hear even today", says Urponen.
However, the Suomen Neito competition found an ally in the mainstream media, who were firmly in favour of the venture. The competition would be looking for an ideal for Finnish womanhood, and this was not seen as a bad thing at all.
“When Armi won, there really was a strong conception that she represented all the desired virtues.”
The international angle became the most important motive for the contest from the moment when it became clear that we were not just choosing a "Maiden of Finland", but a maiden for Finland, and there were bigger things glinting on the horizon.
It is hard even to imagine how significant the whole Miss Universe thing was felt to be.
"The escort committee gave Kuusela the score of Jean Sibelius’s Finlandia to take to America with her."
And not just any old copy, either. Someone had been to visit the elderly composer at his home in Ainola and had requested he hand-sign the score on the cover sheet.
Finland certainly got what it yearned for: bigtime attention.
When Armi Kuusela won, the choice was down at least in part to the desire to show support for plucky little Finland. The international news agencies also made a big splash over the win.
Kuusela, not even quite 18 at the time, spent six weeks in the States.
On her departure from these shores the girl dressed rather modestly, but what came back was very different: a woman who had seen the world, whose clothes and make-up were a great deal more showy, and with a whole different level of poise about her.
The girl from the little northern municipality of Muhos was no longer a pretty country lass, but had bloomed into this cosmopolitan beauty.
In order that the maximum international attention be coaxed out of the matter, Kuusela’s manager arranged for her to go on a world tour.
Yes, that's right, Armi had her own manager, one Kalervo Keranto.
He went off with Armi and her sister to India, Japan, and the Philippines in early 1953.
While in Manila, Armi Kuusela met a young Filipino businessman and real estate heir, 25-year-old Virgilio “Gil” Hilario.
A whirlwind romance ensued, and they were married in Tokyo in May 1953, while she was still on tour.
The marriage generated a huge fuss, and caused some conflicting sentiments even in the international media.
One of the most annoyed, however, was manager Keranto, for whom this was definitely a bridge too far.
He poured out his feelings in a book published (very promptly) later in the same year, entitled Kaunotar katoaa kaukoitään [unfortunately the alliteration is lost, but the title translates crudely to "Beauty Disappears in Far East"].
"For him, Armi had been an exceptional indvidual, a one-off, and after her marriage she became just a Filipino woman among many. Keranto felt that with Armi’s move to Manila, Finland had lost all the glory associated with her, and what was left was of lesser worth", explains Urponen.
Keranto also had doubts about Gil Hilario’s motives. He believed the man had wooed and won Armi to bring himself an extra lustre in the Philippines and also to score global kudos for the country.
This was the scale of the "gift to the world" that Keranto saw in Armi Kuusela.
Then again, Keranto also felt that Armi had “gone bad” through exposure to the temptations of the world outside.
He describes colourfully in his book how Kuusela no longer resembled that original Aino archetype, but that the winsome maiden had been replaced by a “hard-shelled American type of woman” was was not shy of making a fuss about her elegance and her feminine vanity, or about her erotic and other demands.
In Urponen’s view, the pointed references to Armi’s erotic demands were directly associated with her having gone and married a foreigner.
"This marriage of itself showed the sort of behaviour that was 'not quite the done thing'. And her manager was not alone in thinking that way."
Even today, one can hear catty talk about how this foreign gigolo stole a woman away from Finland.
When Gil eventually visited Finland, up in the north he was fairly good-naturedly referred to as a billy-goat.
On her marriage, Armi gave up the Miss Universe title before her year was up, but she proved to have considerable staying power in the star department, however much her disappointed manager had predicted it would all end with a whimper. Positive publicity won out.
"After the initial shock had worn off, the negativity waned", says Urponen.
For instance in the weekly Viikkosanomat the international marriage was never regarded as a scandal, but was openly admired. To some extent the reason was in her choice of husband.
"Gil was not just anyone: in the Finnish media coverage there was an emphasis on his wealth and his good family background."
In any event, Armi Kuusela’s world tour went on as a honeymoon, which the American press got quite interested in. The couple were asked to pose in the kitchens of American acquaintances, as if they had just popped in for coffee.
Gil was reported to have bought Armi an electric washing machine.
“And a washing machine was a powerful symbol of the luxurious modern way of life."
On the other hand, the marriage contained elements of a sort of colonial-era romance, which went down very well in the 1950s.
Kuusela posed by the swimming pool and at glamorous dinners, and she had her own retinue of servants.
According to the findings of Urponen’s research, marriages that cross national borders are regarded in different ways, often dependent upon the nationality of the spouse and where the union was forged.
"A foreign man coming to live in Finland is regarded in a more negative light."
Gil Hilario was accepted. He became the collective Finnish son-in-law, who gamely ate Finnish food and learnt how to ski on his visits here. He even posed for the cameras in a Lappish national outfit.
He actually seemed to enjoy the times he spent in Finland.
All in all, Armi Kuusela’s marriage to an Asian man may perhaps have only accentuated her Finnishness.
Her new and exotic living environment also had an impact.
In the Finland of the 1950s there was open admiration for Kuusela’s international mobility, for the way she could adapt to different cultures and move in refined circles as if she were born to it.
"One has to ask whether the figure of Armi would ever have become so legendary if she had simply returned to Finland and married an ordinary Finnish Matti or Pekka. Maybe her marriage to a foreign man underlined Armi’s export value, even if it was initially the subject of widespread criticism."
How does the story of Armi Kuusela live today?
She is still regarded as an ambassador of Finnishness abroad. But above all she is a part of our recent history, the woman who put post-war Finland on the world map by virtue of her Miss Universe crown.
"In the writings of today her marriage is not always even mentioned. It is not what puts her into the media spotlight." .
Few even know that Gil Hilario died several decades ago (in 1975), though not before they had had five children together, and that Kuusela has been married to an American diplomat for nigh on thirty years.
Armi and Albert Williams live in San Diego, California.
"In the old times, Armi had some kind of an obligation to keep in touch with the Finnish media and in the public eye. Nowadays she is no longer at the disposal of the Finns in that way."
It is telling that she is known in Finland by her maiden name even now, although she gave it up well over 50 years ago.
Up here she is always remembered as young, Finnish, and successful.
"The original image has been a durable one, and her marriage did not erode its significance."
In Urponen’s view, the memory of that 1952 victory lives on because it meshes astoundingly well with the Finnish ideals of today. We still thirst for international triumphs.
"We still think it is great when a Finn gets recognition on the world stage. There’s something similar in the Kuusela phenomenon and today’s global Nokia brand", she concludes.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 3.2.2008
Note: Armi Kuusela was the first Finnish winner of the Miss Universe pageant (held quite conveniently, some might churlishly suggest, in the same year that the country hosted the Olympics), but she is not the only winner. Anne Pohtamo (nowadays Anne-Marie Pohtamo-Hietanen) repeated the feat and took the crown in 1975, another year that was of some significance for Finland. Two weeks after Pohtamo's coronation in July, the CSCE Helsinki Accords were signed in Finlandia Hall.
Links:
A photogallery of images taken from the 1952 Miss Universe competition.
Armi Kuusela (Wikipedia)
Maija Urponen, University of Helsinki
ANNA-STINA NYKÄNEN / Helsingin Sanomat
anna-stina.nykanen@hs.fi
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| 5.2.2008 - THIS WEEK |
Not Fade Away: Armi's star still burns (ADDED 6.2.2008)
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